


Trouble Will Find Me

by tripodion



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Escapism, Gen, M/M, Mind Palace, One Shot, Organized Crime, Other, Post-Reichenbach, Series, Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach, World Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 11:15:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tripodion/pseuds/tripodion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you look back, you will be lost. I will not see you lost. I would see the world burn, and you remain as you are, before I see you look back at the burning city I have left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Should Live in Salt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PockyGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PockyGhost/gifts).



> I was listening to The National's incredibly beautiful new album "Trouble Will Find Me" and I decided to create a series of one-shots and short stories based on each song and featuring characters from Sherlock.
> 
> Welcome. Don't look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I: And you said you felt a little guilt, but the chorus is, “I should live in salt for leaving you behind”.
> 
> M: Honestly, that was just kind of an abstract image or something in my head and I don’t know. I think Lot’s wife turned to salt when she looked back at the city. I think they used to pack bodies in salt. So there’s not specifically any meaning into it directly, but it seemed like a bad thing to have to live in salt. A lot of my lyrics approximate meaning without me knowing why they sound right."
> 
> \- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
> 
> This chapter is for the first track, "I Should Live in Salt" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK-EF9fAHIY). The excerpt above is from an interview with The National's singer Matt Berninger, a wonderful human being and A++ lyricist. The things that voice does to you, man. The things that voice does to you.

Salt comes from death. The death of the seas, coaxed out of the slowly constricting throat as the water evaporates, leaving only a thirsty earth. A death lightly dusted over dry crusts of water, a death that lounges in briny patches on the surface like lesions on a failing face. It runs as powdered blood in veins deep under the earth, rich and brackish. The animals found it first and then man followed the path to their cache, as they do.

Salt comes from death. And so do I. Wherever I go, death follows. Sometimes we are friends, and the right man dies at the right time and death is on my side. Sometimes it turns on me, and I’m left to bleed out quietly until I  manage to pick myself up, until I think of what would happen if I didn’t, I think of not seeing him again, and I stagger to the nearest hospital, or to whatever hovel I’m living in so I can stitch myself back together. It’s happened much too often lately. I’m too close to getting what I want. I’m getting sloppy, careless.

I’m in a hotel outside Dublin, if it can be called that. Sitting on the lip of the tub, cauterising the ends of my stitches. It wasn’t so awful this time; I’ve gotten better. I’ve watched John do it enough to know the basics.

I have to leave soon. Media does so love vigilantes, if I can be called that. Won’t they just eat this up, celebrity detective, back from the dead, bringing justice to the wicked and so on and so on. I can’t let them know. I can’t let him know either. Not from them, just from me. He deserves what little I have left to give him, an apology, perhaps, or a sad little swan song before I bow out from his life with whatever you’d call grace from someone whose lost all sense of it. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and about him. I know he won’t forgive me easily, or perhaps even at all. I’ve prepared for any eventuality. I’ve lived a lifetime without him in more time than I was ever with him, and I know which one would kill me faster, a life with him or without.

I wash the streaked blood from the tub and light a cigarette. The bedside table is littered with butts already, and burn marks. I’ve kept the room clean enough—even cleaner than it was when I came—but I am so close to the end and a little litter won’t hurt me now. I suck in the smoke, feel the wave of coolness, and I shut my eyes and revel in it and tell myself this feeling will last.

I am Lot’s wife. I don’t even have a name anymore; people call me all kinds of things, know me by all sorts of names. At first, when the names all piled upon each other, I wondered if this was the worst punishment, that I couldn’t even keep the one thing I’d taken with me, but I’ve learned that there are far worse things people can do to you, or that you can do to them. I know I am Sherlock Holmes, even if they don’t. I know who I am, muddled however much it is in this mire I’ve dragged myself through for nearly three years. I know who I am, or who I was. I managed to pack those parts of me away in tombs of salt.

The night before my fall, I knew the iniquity of my city was going to be destroyed. Me, the machine, I knew. Of course I knew. Machines function at a higher processing rate than most people. I let John call me those things, I let him say those words, because I knew him angry was far more bearable than him wrecked, or him dead. I would let him do anything, I would let him destroy me, if it meant it was me and not him. I accepted my chemical defectiveness long ago. I can admit it now. I know who I was, and I know the worth of that man to John.

I was told to run. I was taken aside, bloodied and pale and stricken, and told to run, lest I be swept away in the destruction, but I was already gone. I heard everything John said, out there in the blood and cold pavement. I heard everything. I was only a wall away from him, I knew he was going to identify my body, the one that we were sure looked so much like me. He was just over there, just _right there_ and I did nothing. I couldn’t look back or I’d be turned to salt where I stood. I couldn’t look back. I just couldn’t. I wanted nothing else but to turn and let the destruction I’d escaped fill my eyes, the pyre that was the fault of a defective thing like me, but I didn’t, and now I think of little else.

Mobile’s ringing. Caller ID says… _oh_. Press send. _Comeoncomeoncomeon—_

Click. Live connection.

“Tell me.”

* * *

The walls are swelling around us, here in the quiet. The TV’s still on; he didn’t bother to turn it off. It’s not a priority when your once dead flatmate walks in, I suppose.

It’s been an hour and thirteen—fourteen minutes. He hasn’t said a word. Not one utterance, not a wild punch, not _anything_ , and I need to know why. I need to know what he’s thinking. I need to.

“Say something.” I huff finally, bringing an unlit cigarette to my mouth. “Don’t make me read your mind. Still can’t do that, in case you forgot—”

He snatches the lighter from me before I can spark a light. He doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t said anything, but I knew that would get some kind of reaction out of him. I need him to _do something_ , I need to gather data, and data does not spring from nothing. God, he looks terrible. He must have lost near two stone. It can’t be because of me. I couldn’t look back. I just couldn’t. I’d have been turned to salt, an eternal commemorative witness to some great tragedy.

He continues to stare at me, and I look around the flat if it means not looking back at him. Nothing’s changed, but I already knew that when I came in. It’s perfectly preserved, like a shrine, like it’s been packed in salt and dried out and preserved, like no one lives here anymore. There aren’t any stray dishes, or clutter, or anything. He’s wiped all the data I need like some sort of virus. It’s maddening.

“I thought you’d leave.” I mutter to the walls, and to him. “With the rent and all.” _And the ghosts._

He continues to stare at me. I’m becoming quite frustrated, this lack of response is entirely undeserved, not to mention unexpected. I thought he’d _do_ something. I thought he’d be happy or angry or sad or…just _something_. He seems empty. I didn’t want that; I don’t want it now.

“You should know me better than that.” He says quietly. “The rent’s what you want to talk about? Fine. The rent’s been paid for. By your brother. For a lifetime. Do you know why? Because he felt bad that you went and killed yourself in front of me, and that he was partially the reason why. The only thing keeping me in this flat is _pity._ ” He spits the last word. This is better. He can deal with anger. He can’t deal with _nothing_.

“I’m sure the location is also commendable—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” John snaps suddenly, and it’s as if the fog has been lifted. He looks livid, red-faced and furious. His veneer is cracking. Wonderful, we’re getting somewhere.

“Took too much time.” I offer.

“Too much— _too much time?_ ” His voice cracks from stress. “You couldn’t send a text or an email or call me or have your bloody fucking brother tell me? Or Molly? Yes, I know about her, Mycroft told me, which is more than I can fucking say for you, you utter posh fucking _prick_ , Sherlock Holmes.”

New data. Correlate, analyse, proceed with extreme caution. Subject is volatile.

“I didn’t want to hurt you.” That, at least, was the truth.

“You didn’t want to hurt me.” John repeats, and laughs. He _laughs_. Something inside me shifts. This thing I’ve been carrying for three years, this thing I’ve packed in salt and preserved so I didn’t have to think about it, it’s coming to the surface like patches of brine and it—and I am…I am afraid of it. I try to push it back down before John can see, before he _knows_. He can’t know. He can’t.

“I thought you would appreciate it.” I hears myself say softly, much too softly for someone trying to seem better, bigger, than what he was, or what he was feeling. “I was trying to be…like you.”

“No.” John shakes his head in disbelief. “You’re not. You’re nothing like me.”

“No,” I admit, “I’m not. But I tried.”

John says nothing, slipping back into his previous state. This is getting us nowhere, but it’s far, far better than being without him, so I don’t care, I really don’t.

“Would you like me to leave you alone?”

John says nothing.

“Mrs Hudson doesn’t know I’m here. I came straight to you, after I…I can leave as quickly as I came.”

“You’re not right anymore.” John says, with a bemused look on his face. “You’re different.”

“Apologies.” I reply as I stand to shrug on my coat. _A handful of hours with you was worth it, worth this, seeing you. Sentiment—_

“Wait, I—” John falls into troubled silence and I wait for him to gain what ground he can manage. “I just...why couldn’t you have told me?”

“What could I have said?” I ask. This is awful, I don’t know what to say. I never know the right thing to say, even though I’d expected this night, though I’d dreamed of it, though I’d thought about it more than anything else, I didn’t have anything planned at all. I thought I’d had time. “What could I have done to make you whole? To make you hurt less? I didn’t take you with me, and the fact remains: why? I could say you’d slow me down, I could say I didn’t want you there, but the truth…the truth is you were a liability.”

I watch John crumble before me, I feel my blood thickening, drying, turning me to a pillar of salt for looking back at things I shouldn’t have.

“A liability.” John repeats hoarsely.

“Yes. If you’d been injured, if you’d died, I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t know—taking you with me was never an option. You were safer here.”

“Safer.” He repeats again. He’s staring into nothing and I don’t know what he’s thinking unless he tells me _more_ and he’s saying _nothing_ and we are getting _nowhere_.

“I left you.” I say quietly. “I understand the consequences, I understood them when I jumped off the roof and made you watch me, and I’m sorry, John, I’m sorry for making you hurt, for making you feel less because I was trying to save your life, but I won’t apologise for the things I did to keep you here, to be talking to you know. If I hadn’t, who knows what might have happened to you? Who knows if you’d be dead, if you’d be shot again or injured or—”

“There are worse things, Sherlock.” John interjects roughly. “There are far, far worse things than being shot, if it meant I’d have been with you. You’re worth any wound I’d ever get. But you left me. You made me think you were dead. Three years. For three years, I thought—I thought this was it. I thought this was the best my life could ever get, and then I lost you. You made me think you were dead, and I believed you.”

“I—it was a trick, John. Just a—a magic trick, that’s all.”

John stares at me hard for a moment before he smiles a rueful hateful little smile and gets up.

“Well it was real for me, so great fucking trick there, one for the books I reckon. I’m going to bed.”

“John I—may I stay?” _Here, near you, close by, may I stay in your line of sight for the rest of my life?_

“Tonight, Sherlock, I don’t really give a damn. Whether you’re here in the morning or not is up to you.”

He disappears into the room down the hall. I don’t have the courage to ask myself why he didn’t go upstairs.

* * *

I stay. Of course I stay, since I know what life is like without John. Without _this_ , this unnameable feeling I get ensconced in our home, in knowing we’re safe, knowing this is over and we can be happy, one day if not this one.

Lying on the sofa, bare feet dangling off the edges, I feed myself coldness. Three years of it, every day, like clockwork, like a pill I’m supposed to take. A pill every morning to forget, to not feel as much as I did, to be what I used to be, to become a machine. It’s cold in the den. I can feel it seep into my bones, encased as they are, perfectly preserved in my high salinity life.

It’s dark, down there in the cellar. When life becomes too bright, when the sky outside darkens and the raging winds begin to blow and I can taste the salt and dirt and rusted metal of the cyclones in the air, I abandon my mind palace and throw open the doors to my cellar, where I clatter down the stairs and begin my wait.

There’s one window in the cellar, high and narrow, so I might glance out and watch the storm rage by. It’s dark down there, but when I want to pockets of fire bloom in the air and I roll them in his palms—they’re soft, like down, I’ll never be burned down here, never have anyone burn for me either—and let them go to float in the middle of the room. The walls are cold, made of impenetrable stone no man or storm could break no matter how much they raged; my fortifications; my prison. The parquet floors are shining and clean and wrought with such intricacy that I can’t stare too long; I don’t want to be stuck in the cellar, I want to escape into it, and out of it. The spheres of fire shine like the hearts of the hearth and the shadows thicken inside, the storm rages outside, I sit in my solitude, and salt blows through that lone window to collect on my lips like warm sea spray.

I blink. Rain spatters on the window outside. Dishes clink from inside the kitchen. The warm bright balls of flame turn to soft gold light from the table lamp at my head. The wind picks up, screaming in my ears, and the storm outside rages. I don’t want to leave my cellar. Not really. Or so I tell myself. I lie like any other man; I die like any other man.

I stare at the kitchen wall. John comes in at one point, with his old pyjamas and his wild hair and his wild cold feelings, and I watch him make tea without a word. He doesn’t offer me any, but I know John filled the kettle full enough for two cups, just in case, or perhaps out of habit.

I stare at the kitchen wall. John turns on the television. News. Boring. Comes through the cracks of my cellar. It’s cold out here; my skin pimples with gooseflesh. I taste salt on my lips. The homicide was the fault of the brother, not the current suspect, just listen to him. I could say it out loud and John would look at me and smile and say _amazing_ or _brilliant_ and I’d explain it all and _genius needs an audience_ , doesn’t it?

The weather comes on. Cloudy, with rain. How surprising, in London, in the springtime. Truly shocking.

_I have a wing for you, in the palace, you know. Well, how would you know since I took great care to see that you didn’t. Built it before I left, added on what I could salvage from the wreck I left behind. Would you like to hear that, or would it make you angry with me? I want you to see it, I wish you could, I’d even let you write on the walls, write all your frustrations with me and I’d finally know what to do about this, about you, because you are not giving me anything to work with here and how can I make you better if I keep seeming to make you worse? Machines don’t do well packed in salt, John, didn’t you know that? They have a tendency to rust right to the bone._

“Can you turn that down?” I hear myself say, just to say it, just to say something. “There’s too much crying.”

John ignores me. I suppose he’s been without me so long he’s now accustomed to living alone, without interruption, more than he ever was with a life crammed to the gills with me and all the things I asked of him.

“I lived in salt for you. For leaving you. Did you know that?”

John ignores me. I march on, too far gone to care. Too far gone to salvage any part of myself I wanted to hide. I’m going to drown anyways. The storm outside rages. The cold and rain are seeping through the cracks.

“I thought about you, you know. Often, concernedly.”

“Often with concern or concernedly often?” John asks finally, without looking at me.

I think about it before deciding, though I don’t know why I do since I know the answer. Rain water trickles through the cellar walls. I’ve sprung a leak. “Both.”

“And that bothers you, thinking about me often?”

“It bothers me, thinking about you often.”

“Right.” John says, clipped, and water from the storm is pooling swiftly on the cellar floor.

“It killed me, I think, dying for you.” I mutter, caught in the intricate spin of the parquet floors. “I buried myself in salt so I didn’t have to think about it. I was Lot’s wife.”

“You’re a man, Sherlock, not a Biblical figure, or a pillar of salt. Just in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“You’re different too, you know. You’re not right anymore either.”

“Well watching someone’s best friend throw themselves off a building does tend to change a man.” John snipes, then rears on me, face reddening. “And since when do you fucking get to decide whether I’m _right_ or not? You don’t have that power anymore, not since you threw yourself off a building and made me watch. You _left_ , Sherlock, you died and left me to a life where I was something less than what I was before. Do you know what that’s like, losing so much that you fall right past what you thought rock bottom was? Knowing you have _farther to fall_?”

_Of course I do. I already did it, for you, you great stupid thing._

The man I’d left behind, buried in the salt, he might have said that once. Might not have even hesitated. Probably wouldn’t have. But he’s gone, and I am here.

“This wasn’t easy on me either, John—”

If possible, John’s eyes narrow further. Wrong hypothesis, negative results, you’ve done it again, Holmes. Well done. The water at my feet shines as the light brightens against parquet tiles. The storm rages outside.

“No, I’m sure these three years for me were just a fucking walk in the park compared to yours. Was running all over the globe and having great fucking adventures all the time a little too stressful? Had to take a public flight? Did your five star suite get downgraded?”

I stare at him, at the raw vehemence pouring from this wounded man, and a thought occurs to me late, so annoyingly _late_ , and my head hurts at the realisation. _Of course_. _Crucial data, nearly overlooked, stupid stupid stupid—_

“What exactly did you think my absence entailed, John?”

That stops him. The water recedes.

“What—posh git like you, I’m betting all you had to do was ask Mycroft and you got a blank cheque to do whatever you needed to—”

I shake my head, I want to rid myself of the light, shining so bright it’s blinding me; makes my head ache; I taste salt on my lips.

“He only—” I blink. The light shimmers on the rising water. I’m going to drown in my cellar if I don’t get out, I’ll drown in the salt and the rain. “Only knew where I was going, if I wanted him to. I flew economy, or snuck onto trains, or hotwired cars. If I didn’t have to pay for it, I didn’t. I lived in holes, with rats and roaches and desperate people trying to live alongside some specimens of the absolute scum of the earth. Sometimes I slept on the streets, or behind skips, or not at all. I lived, if you can call it that, but don’t think for one minute that I left you to jet off on some grand adventure, don’t think I gave you up for something better. I _died_ every night, in the worst ways, and I did it for you. I gave up my life, I gave up our home and our life, I gave up _this_ , for you. Do you know what it’s like, to live in salt, to thirst for things you can’t have? To hear water nearby, to see it in the distance, and know you can’t cross the void you’ve made to get to it? I built a _chasm_ , I buried myself in a landslide and left you on the other side and now I can’t _see_ you anymore.”

John stares at me hard for a moment, lips pursed. My body feels cold, like I’ve been floating in salt water, a bloated corpse for days. I’m waiting for him to speak—it’s etiquette, I’m told, in situations like this. Seconds unfold into minutes and John scrunches each one that passes up like a wad of paper, tossing it behind us. He’s wearing that face he makes when he doesn’t understand something but wants to. Good. He’s trying.

“You said you built a chasm—” He says finally. “You’re comparing me…to water.”

I nod. I don’t trust myself to speak anymore.

“Water to a man dying of thirst…” John’s eyebrow quirks up. “People will definitely talk.”

I can’t help but straighten up out of my misery. If John is feeling good enough to make jokes—

The lights are blinding. There must be water in my lungs by now. Am I out of the cellar? It was flooding, I couldn’t get out—

The lights are gone, and I slide into darkness.

When I come to, John is kneeling over me, brow furrowed. His lips are moving, but in the haze I don’t know what he’s saying. The lights are blurred above me.

Something’s pressed to my lips—water. Finally. Water for the man dying of thirst. Water for the man who buried himself in salt. I drink with the selfish overindulgence thirst brings and feel the water slop over my shirt. It’s cold. I find I don’t care. Has there ever been such a glorious invention, such a glorious moment, as that drink of water?

“—Dehydrated, you stupid idiot…” John is saying.

“Redundant.” I gasp between gulps. “Pick one and stick with it.”

“Idiot.” John mutters, and then he’s leaving _no_ and I’m alone with a wet shirt and wounded pride. He reappears shortly and shoves a tea towel into my hands before sitting next to me on the floor. “I should get you a kid’s cup next time. You’ll spill less.”

“What happened?”

“You fainted.”

“Yes, clearly.” I snap, and I don’t miss the quick grin on his face, smothered as if it was unbidden but I saw it all the same.

“You were dehydrated probably. Knowing you and your dietary schedules, I’m pretty certain. When did you eat last?”

I stop, remembering, cycling through backwards memories. When _did_ I eat last?

“Christ, you don’t even remember do you? Pillock.”

He’s up again, moving away from me. I keep him in my line of sight. I have a mind to do it for the rest of our lives. He’s grabbing a coat—no—he’s leaving, he can’t leave, this is his— _our_ —home, he can’t just go—

“Come on, Lot’s wife, are you coming or not?” He calls, and I stumble to my feet.

“Where are we going?”

“So many questions, you’re starting to sound like I did. We’re going to get you something to eat.”

* * *

This is too easy. He’s just sitting there, eating lo mein like I never left, like I didn’t destroy us both. He should be angry—he’d been angry, just not enough, not what I’d expected—goddammit John, give me something here, this is too easy, I know you, I do—

He looks at me, fork halfway to his mouth, before he sighs and sets it down. “You’re not eating.”

“I ate.”

He doesn’t believe me, judging by that look, and says as much. “You had one bite, two max.”

“This is too easy. You’re being too fair.”

“Apologies.” He says in a most unapologetic way, tucking one more into the noodles.

“What can I do? What do you want me to say?”

“I want to enjoy my food. I want you to say you’ll eat yours.”

“I’ll eat mine.” I say, but I don’t move to picking up my fork. He’s hiding something, there’s something he won’t tell me, something is wrong—

“There is a void between us. I don’t like it.”

“Well you put it there.” John says tartly, as if to finish it with _so bridge it yourself_. He quiets for a moment, then “I don’t like it either.”

“How was the funeral?”

John’s fork clatters to his plate and he sends an irate glance into the universe, as if it was the one who annoyed him and not me.

“It was fine. Well not—it was a funeral, Sherlock, how do you think it was?”

“You seem...torn up.”

“She died a week ago, I’ve had time to get over it, thanks.”

“She was your sister.”

“She was nothing to you, so why the fuck do you care?” He snaps, toying at his noodles with vehemence.

“She was something to you.”

He stares at me, face washed out from florescent lights, with an expression I can’t name, which is irksome. I know all of them; happiness, fear, anger, sadness, and all the ones in between. But this…I can’t name this. Grief, perhaps, and relief, and…and something else.

“Not near the end. Not much before it either…but at the beginning, yeah, she was.”

“Tell me.” I say quietly. He makes no move to acknowledge that I’ve spoken, he just stares at the corner of the table with that horrible muddled expression— _martyr, he looks like a martyr_.

I pick up my fork and reach across the table to swirl it in his lo mein. It drips sauce onto the table, and he watches me eat it.

“I told you to eat _your_ food.”

“Same difference. Tell me.”

John raises his eyes to mine.

* * *

I open my eyes. I’m back on the sofa, my second home. Currents are running lazily through the ceiling. I wonder where the dark parts with the deepest water are.

The faucet is running in the kitchen. John hasn’t said a word since the restaurant.

“Would you like a plaster?” I ask into the void.

He doesn’t answer, and the faucet is shut off with a rough smack. He’s still angry.

He comes in a few minutes later, or at least appears in the doorway. I can see his bandaged hand, stained in spots with red. Smashed plates will do that.

“What do you want from me, Sherlock?” He asks, voice raw with frustration. He didn’t cry, but he was on the precipice. “Just tell me so I can give it to you and you can get out.”

I stand, and the ceiling current moves to run beneath my feet.

“I want many things from you, John, but you are not amenable to granting me them at this point. I doubt you will any time soon, and I understand.”

“You understand.” He repeats, and laughs the hollow laugh of mad men being burned alive. “You don’t understand, Sherlock.”

“Yes, I do. I understand that I hurt you, and that it was a consequence of my choice to protect you. I understand that bringing up your estranged sister’s death—yes, that’s what she was, don’t pretend otherwise—was not the correct thing to do, but what I don’t understand, John, is _you_. I come back to you and your silences and you make jokes and talk like nothing happened, like you’re fine with this and you are not fine, John, and neither am I, and yet you sit there and look at me with those martyr eyes of yours like you’re the only one who’s been suffering this whole time; well what about me, then? What of the machine that broke itself in your name? Oh, we shouldn’t speak of it, it’ll be better if we just don’t talk about it, is that it? We’ll just go back to normal and all of this will sort itself out and we’ll be _fine_. Stiff upper lip, Queen and Country, is that it? I _died_ for you, and you say I don’t understand, but you are wrong, John Watson, I understand plenty, I understand more than you could possibly hope to!”

The silences after angry outbursts are deafening, heavy with the realization that control had been voided for a few irredeemable seconds. John is staring at me and I can’t even call this an argument, he hasn’t said anything, he’s giving me nothing and I—

I’m breathing heavily. I didn’t expect to. Didn’t want to— _fuck,_ I didn’t—

John was always the one who lost his temper. I’ve been a pot of boiling sea water, and now all of the water is gone and only salt remains. The man who lives in salt rises again.

“My eyes are fine.” John says solemnly and I want to collapse into nothingness. I want him to sever the cord and be done with it, with this game, I don’t want to play anymore, I am done, just kill me and be done with the damn thing, but don’t leave me like I left you, I couldn’t—I wouldn’t…just don’t do it. You’re a better man than I am, than I ever will be. You’re the saint, and I am a good man playing at greatness.

“There’s nothing wrong with your eyes. Never was.” What am I saying, why, please let this end, this needs to be over _now—_

“You really feel that way? About—about all of it?”

 “Yes.”

“I forgive you.” He says quietly, so quietly I nearly miss it.

“Pardon?”

“I forgive you, Sherlock.”

He’s not cutting the cord. He’s gathering it. He’s bringing it closer.

“—But,” he goes on, “That doesn’t mean I’m not angry. What you did today—what you did three years ago—that was unacceptable, that was worse than unacceptable, it was...it was something I never thought I could live through. And then you come back with your apologies and tell me I'm the one with martyr eyes when you didn't even see how you looked at me when I came in the room. And you sat across from me, hours after you called me water to a dying man, looked me in the face, and told me Harry deserved what she got—I thought I might be the cause of your actual death tonight.”

“What stopped you?” I ask, hoping he’ll smirk and say _sentiment_.

“Witnesses.”

I blanch.

“—well, and logic. I missed you for three years. I thought you were dead, for three years. Imagine what it’d be like knowing you were dead forever, and I was the cause.”

“So it was sentiment.”

“I guess you could call it that, yeah—”

Before he can change his mind, or before whatever _this_ is becomes something else, I crowd into his space and grasp his face in my hands. He tenses, reflexes ready to strike back.

“Tell me you missed me. Missed _this_.”

“I missed you.” He gasps against my palms. “But I don’t know what _this_ is.”

“A demonstration, then.” I murmur, lowering my face to his and capturing his mouth with mine for a moment before I pull away.

“We aren’t fine.” John says quietly.

“Yes. I know.”

“This won’t fix anything, won't fix us, not really—”

“Yes, I _know_ —”

“—But fuck it all if it doesn’t help.” John finishes, grabbing my face in his hands now and kissing me so hard we might fuse together at high heat. He tastes of boiling ocean, hot and wet and thick with salt.

“You asked what I want from you. I want this.” I manage to mumble against his cheek. “I want you and your kindness, your loyalty, your affections. I want your sentiment, John Watson.”

“I could give it to you, some day.” He mumbles back before drawing away. “But right now, I’m knackered. Shattering plates and scaring nice people trying to enjoy a meal out is more exhausting than I thought.”

He moves to head to m—his bedroom.

“John.” I call, and he turns, a shadow in the darkness, barely visible. “I—may I stay?”

I can hear his smile through the darkness.

“If you like.”

* * *

Sometimes the salt rubs into the open wounds, and I remind him of why I left, or of the fact that I did, and he leaves me for a while. Not physically, but he’ll be right next to me and a thousand miles away, just as far as when I left him. I wonder if it’s payback. His retribution. He will say _we’re fine_ and I’ll know he’s lying and we’ll have a row eventually when the kettle boils over and the steam spills out, which leads to loud words and great sex. John likes to channel his anger through his cock, I’ve learned—a lesson taught to me multiple times, bent over the kitchen table or over the arm of the sofa or clutching the headboard of a room I’m reclaiming as _ours_ instead of _mine then his_. Sometimes he’ll let me kiss him, let me lick into his mouth and taste his secrets and his sadness and salt, and I’ll hold him close as he cries after a nightmare or as he’s making breakfast or as I slide into him just _there_ and we are not fine, but we are getting better.

Sometimes the wounds ache but they don’t hurt, and we forget we had them. He’ll kiss me or I’ll do something mad and he’ll smile and we are all fine aren’t we? We arein the room together and it is all fine in that moment. We’ve got a case coming up, the first since my supernatural return, or miraculous, depending which side of the fence you’re on.

I look over at him, typing away at his laptop with the speed and dexterity of my great-aunt. He glances back at me and smiles. There’s still so much unsaid—so much mire to wade through together, but at least we are together, and not apart. Neither of us has it within our constitutions to survive it again, and if he died, I wouldn’t be far behind, but that doesn’t mean we don’t argue about me using the last of the milk as a culture again or that everything is perfect and we just need a white picket fence as the bow on our model life. Sometimes he’ll go away from me, and I will bring him back. Sometimes I’ll barricade myself in my cellar, and he will trudge through the howling wind and salty rain to come down the stairs, hold out his hand amid the floating fire, and lead me back home.

We are not fine, but we are not bad either. We’re getting better. We are working on it.


	2. Demons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Do my crying underwater,  
> I can't get down any farther.  
> All my drowning friends can see,  
> Now there is no running from it.  
> It's become the crux of me,  
> I wish that I could rise above it."  
> Demons - The National

 

* * *

He wakes in a sweat, as he does many nights. Most nights. Morning light creeps through the blinds, and Tokyo carries on with or without him. There’s something wondrous, or something terrible, or perhaps both, something about that many people in that little space, something in that pavement so saturated with life.

He was dreaming of gold hair that melted in his fingers. These days, it’s usually something to do with him; something that was his, or belonged to him. The other night he dreamt of bloodied cable knit jumpers, and the night before that he dreamt of a soft strong voice and the cold touch of fingers that all led to a stethoscope in place of a body, but he knew who it belonged to. There was only one answer to it, only ever one answer.

He wants to roll over, to dismiss the morning, and go back to sleep, back to a great and vast nothingness. He wants to forget, or at least not remember. He wants the mercy of not remembering, of a blank existence, void of memory, void of emotion, of sentiment.

Sherlock Holmes does not want to be here. Not in the slightest, not even a little bit. But life has tossed him a spade down here in the hole that circumstance and his own failings have dug him and told him to get himself out, or otherwise keep digging.

He rolls out of bed, chest covered in a thin sheen of cold sweat, and staggers to the window. He throws open the blinds and cards a hand through his hair, leaning against the sill as he digs in the pocket of his pyjamas for his lighter. Snatching the box of cigarettes from the dresser beside him, he shakes one out and lights it with trembling fingers.

He is saved by moments like this, where he can suck in all the tar he likes and pretend everything is alright. His blood will rush a little faster and he can close his eyes and tell himself he’s in control; these moments where he takes out the string and darns himself back together again after his mind turns traitor and tears himself apart in the distorted void of sleep. Those moments where he does not see his trembling hands.

Smoke drifts from the lit end as he exhales, staring across the street at the restaurant with the basement that becomes a gambling parlour Tuesdays and a fighting ring every other night of the week, except Sunday. Everything’s quiet there on Sunday. A small part of him, one of the raw reflexes from before his fall, wants to break in on Sundays and see what the hell happens there, since a place that’s quietly, illegally busy every other day of the week won’t bother to rest on the last; Tokyo is not a place that sleeps. Another part of him—a part that sounds suspiciously like John more and more every day—tells him that’ a bit not good, and that he has other things he needs to worry about.

The yakuza will come for him in, oh…an hour and fifteen minutes. They will break the door down, flood his little one room apartment, shove a gun in his face and demand to know where all the money he found went to and where their leader’s body is, and then he’ll smile and joke, perhaps throw a tantrum barb someone’s way, and before they know what’s happened two will be on the ground, one may or may not be dead—their mobility, or lack therof, will not remain so unclear however—and the last will have his own gun pointing at his face, taken right out of his inept hands.

He smokes down to the filter. He does that a lot lately, and doesn’t notice when he lights another, or the next one, or the fifth. The street moves beneath him and he stares down at the people below, a gargoyle playing at heroes. A child tugs at his mother’s skirt, bleating for some reward or another; he will not get it, judging from the cardigan she’s wearing. A man in an outdated suit crosses the road and yells at a speeding cab; he’ll be fired today. This city may have a different face than Paris or London or Moscow, but their bones are all the same. These are the people he’s written his life away for, the people he’s traded tea and smoking bullet holes and dishwater hair for empty alleys and the life of a fleeing animal. And that’s what he’s become, see; an animal in the corner, running all over the world. A hare playing at the fox. Fine. If that’s what was to be, he’d run, and he’d hide and he’d do anything and everything that he must to finish his. And he would win. He would. There was no other conceivable option than that he would triumph. He was the good one after all, wasn’t he? He was on the side of the angels. But he hadn't believed that then, and it was harder to do so now.

An hour and ten minutes left. The yakuza, if anything, were at least adherent to structure; they would eliminate a power imbalance quickly, especially one that managed tripped them up from the inside. He had taken out the leader of the lower brothers; they’d be out for blood, not to mention the money he’d taken, but they wouldn't find either.

He glances back to the hiding place, to the spot he’d turn to in case of fire.

* * *

Aizukotetsu-kai may have had the bones of a yakuza, but the meat and muscle of the buraku—social discards and outcasts—to make it move.

Takaijihi. That was his name now. ‘Tall Mercy’. Partly for his height, yes, but partly for the other meaning: a high price; expensive. Neither side pretended that the reason they had allowed him to attend their meetings wasn’t because of the damage he’d done to the three cocksure foot members that tried to mug him.

After they’d sulked off tail-tucked and cried to her, their gang boss sent out some underlings to break in and found Sherlock licking his wounds—or stitching rather, as it’d been messier than he’d anticipated; he’d blurted ‘Ninkyo’ through a mouthful of blood, holding up his hands, before they laughed, stopped beating him, and taken him into the heart of Kyoto to face their boss. He’d been thrown to the floor, his head held high as he looked at her, absolutely certain that he was going to die, and he didn’t see the beauty of Kita Seong-Eun before him, he saw his fingers running through short strands of golden hair inside his head, and he imagined what it would have felt like without feeling the pain of the knowledge that he could only guess. But instead of shooting him and leaving him to die, however, she smiled at him, and offered a hand to help him up; she knew, as he did, that it was better the tiger was kept in your cage, and not someone else’s.

Kita Seong-Eun, the daughter of a Korean mother and Japanese father, was the second woman to beat him; she had the grace to call it a draw and spare his pride, what little he might still have. She was merely next in line to step up to where he knelt—because who can stand after a fall like that?—and neatly chipped a piece of him up, made him heavier, not lighter, forced him closer to the floor. She had loomed over him with The Woman’s shadow. She had Sherlock Holmes at her mercy, and she had the power to afford to leave him alive.

But whereas The Woman had been all threats and secrets and one powerplay tripping after another, Seong-Eun openly acknowledged her position in life without denying what she had done to get there, nor all the benefits it allowed her now. She was dangerous because she had no secrets to be used against her, no one to be loved by her, and where The Woman had inspired no loyalty but her own, Kita Seong-Eun commanded the love of all of her underlings, and the respect of her elders.

Kita Seong-Eun may not have been the same kin as The Woman, yes, but he easily recognised they were of the same breed.

The night they met, she had him dumped into a chair across from a cheap shaky table and commanded his handcuffs be struck off before presenting him with a finger of clear liquid in a plastic cup. He sniffed it, and she’d laughed at him.

“You asked for ninkyo, did you not?” She said. He didn’t trust her eyes. “No one will kill you while I am here, I promise this.” She glances down at her cup, fingers idly stroking the sides. “Normally, we would have a traditional initiation ceremony, but you aren’t quite normal, are you Mr Holmes?”

He said nothing, but raised his cheap little cup in a toast.

“To beginnings.”

“No,” She smiled, and he didn’t trust that either, “To rheostat”.

They both downed the sake and she drew a kit from her side, opening it to reveal bottles of ink and a pack of sterile needles, waving over a tattooed man from where he hovered in the corner.

Proceed with caution.

* * *

She had called on him a day later. Not in person, of course. They were not friends, not acquaintances, and barely allies. She had merely gotten to him first, and unleashed him on everyone else.

She had sent Ning Min Lee, known in inner circles simply as Ne, after the Japanese word which asks for confirmation, for an agreement—a man who paradoxically centred his whole identity on the phrase equivalent of ‘am I right?’. He was tall and skinny, with a slicked back pompadour that looked as if he’d made it by greasing up a hairball from the drain and a prominent brow and high cheekbones made him look skeletal, and chronic ulcers gave him a sickly and menacing countenance, as if he were always annoyed. He had arrived with a cigarette in one hand, yellow juzu beads around the other—Sherlock had nearly smiled at the irony—and with his shirtsleeves rolled up, displaying his tattoos, as if they could strike fear into a man who’d seen them nearly every day in London, where they meant nothing.

_You are a funny man, Mr Holmes. You will not try to run, ne?_

He had given Sherlock an address, a name, and one sentence on what to do before softly adding that if he failed, he would let Sherlock see just how long his intestines could stretch.

Information he already knew, of course, but not careless enough to test himself (the average intestine, total, is twenty-odd feet long; his, perhaps longer, or shorter; he didn’t want to approximate).

He did his job. That much could have been said of him. He’d done it. For who exactly, he couldn’t say. He didn’t know anymore, to be honest. For him, no, it hadn’t been for him. He hadn’t gained anything, except a few more secure days in Tokyo…a few days that meant nothing. He’d still have to run, in the end. He always ran, in the end. He didn’t do it for Kita—why on earth would he do it for her?—and for John…everything was for John, everything was for them, for both of them, for who they’d been, and perhaps who they might be, but nothing was just for one cause. He was a prism, and the light shone through, flashing in all directions, refracting off of himself until he was in darkness. Is the prism aware that it exists for light, or does light exist for the prism? He isn’t sure…he isn’t sure he’s ever been sure.

The club music pounds through the pavement, through the stilettos of the dressed up women, of the girls pretending to be the women they want to be, and through the shining shoes of the social climbers, and the tight dresses, tight trousers, tight ambitions, tight dreams of those standing in line.

He flashes the cross-and-brackets daimon inked onto his wrist, set amid the coils of a dragon slithering out of a skull—impermanent, but no one needs to know, so long as it looks convincing—and he understands that this life is degrading, as surely as the ink will fade from his skin. The shelf life of all the lives he’s occupied is never long; he uses them until his purposes are met. Kita knows this, and so does he, which is why she will keep him on life support until she is done with him.

He can hear the music from outside; the manager must be in the red.

_I shoot the lights out, hide til it’s bright out—_

He’s let in to pass through the line, amid the shadowed nudges and hushed whispers of ‘gaijin’, and revels in the shallow sullied feeling of being more than these people, these ladder-climbers, and he crosses into this next world, into a bright, flashy falseness. How the lights of this existence must look when they’re turned on.

_Are you willing to sacrifice your life—_

The song screams, echoing round the room, and bursts into some innane rap music he doesn't have time for. He skirts carefully around the girls hobbling on impossible shoes towards the dance floor, turning his eyes away from the writhing bodies. The floor is tacky beneath his feet. The air smells of sweat and perfume, dry ice and smoke.

Ahead, a shining flight of stairs, glowing green in the darkness. He climbs them, turning on the landing, and coming out onto the balcony club floor.

Lights glimmer on the go-go dancers who flock the stage like birds vying for bread, decked in false faces and colourful plumage, with long legs to wade through the mire. An upbeat, pop dance song is playing in time to the flashing lights. Some idiot DJ is pretending they won’t die one day. Some clubgoers that crowd the floor are pretending they won’t die one day.

A set of men are doing lines off a steel-shining table. Not even hiding it. He feels a pang, an echo of reverberation shoot through him. He remembers that feeling of weightless abandonment, of an invulnerability free of gravity, like you could never come down. That drug that injects you with white hot youth. He feels a pang, and he moves on.

As he waits for his drink, choosing to be blind to the winks of the bartender and her cleavage damn near in his face, he wonders how often criminals think of their mothers. It’s a passing thought, and allows him to look lost in concentration. He never thinks of his mother. He thinks of John, and Mrs Hudson, and his home. He thinks of the life he’s traded for this shiny false existence.

Ne eyes him across the bar, worrying at the yellow beads around his wrist. Sherlock raises his glass, eyebrow arched. Ne lights a cigarette, staring him down, the embers glowing in his eyes before the strobe lights drown them out, and then looks away.

A hand claps him on the shoulder and he starts, ready to toss his drink in their face and use the distraction to break their wrist in three separate ways before he notices the missing tip of an index finger.

“Sherlock, my friend! You are doing well?”

“Ishido.” He nods in greeting, relaxing.

Ishido Shino, mole and next door neighbour, smiles. Yakuza members, after transgressions, are to give the tip of their little finger to their boss, as a sign of repentance and loyalty. Ishido, in his younger days, had overcompensated before his semi-retirement from the gang at the ripe old age of 29. Now, he was benched to the more promising realm of computer hacking and payroll, a business that went hand in hand. Sherlock had the fortune of discreetly persuading him towards his side before Kita Seung Eun had recruited him with that plastic cup of sake and the fake tattoo. A job promised in London through batting lashes was all it took.

Sherlock politely doesn’t notice the delirium tremens as Ishido reaches for his drink, his standard fare of seltzer water and cherry flavouring for colour that he’d affectionately called The Hooker Spasm in a moment of self-deprecation.

“Is she here?” He calls over the din of the music, and Ishido nods, masking it from Ne’s gaze—among others’—with a drink from his glass.

“Upstairs. Waiting, although I don’t know for who.”

“‘Whom’.” Sherlock corrects, eyeing the staircase set discretely in a darkened corridor near the back of the club. “And I do.”

* * *

Ne is waiting at the foot of the stairs, wrapped in shadow as if it was part of him. Sherlock walks past him as if he’s a stranger, although really, what’s the difference?

He hides the slip of paper in his palm, and tugs his gloves on.

* * *

He always thinks he’s seen the worst face humanity can show him, until it gets uglier than before.

In Moscow, he must watch a man he knows to be innocent garrotted in front of him. He knows he can do nothing, he knows that, ultimately, this man will die for a misunderstanding, that he will die for nothing. It’s a feeling he can’t name, watching the demise of someone who means nothing.

In Barcelona, he sits next to a man who will later kill a woman and maim her child driving drunk. Sherlock will be the only witness. Later, he will smother him with a pillow while he sleeps—too merciful an end, but too unforgiving to allow his existence any further—and be forced to run before he can get the information he wants. He thinks of the child often before he goes to sleep, but he can’t remember their face, only their expression as they were crippled in the flash of headlights.

Wherever he goes, his demons follow him.

They are here, now, settling down in his chest in Tokyo.

Kita holds her head in her hands, looking quite bored with the shivering creature across the table.

“How much did she take?”

“Around 50,000 yen.” Ne answers.

She raises an eyebrow. “50,000?” She repeats, and turns back to the girl.

Sherlock knows her. A girl who calls herself Lita. She lives above him in the tenement squalor. He met her in the stairwell, tights ripped, lips bloodied, tears spattering her shirt next to the dried semen. He’d cleaned her face, let her sleep on his couch, and they began a cycle of wash, rinse, repeat. She made him noodle soup, even cracking an egg into it—a luxury for her—and he didn’t ask questions when she appeared at his door, bloodied and bruised and crying. A few times, she tried to pay him back the only way she knew how—he’d start awake when he felt a small hand slip into his pants, or lips at his neck, and he tried to explain to her as best he could in rudimentary Japanese that none of her favours were needed with him. He’d lead her back to the sofa and make her life down before throwing his coat over her like a blanket. He’d watched over her often, sitting at his table since there was no room for a bed, and wondered if he could get the name of the men that hurt her.

She was going to die here. And there was nothing he could do. He still had a man to find, and appeasing Kita Seung-Eun was his only way.

She was crying, and Kita barked her question again.

“Y-yes.” Lita answered. “50,000.”

Kita stares at her a moment, and he feels anger well up inside him. She looks like she doesn’t even care. She’s not even angry; what is 50,000 yen to her? But this girl has transgressed, and must be punished.

“What will you do?” He asks, not looking Lita’s way.

“Eh,” She shrugs. “Let the men have their fun, then maybe take a finger or two…but that’d hurt business, wouldn’t it?” She laughs, ignoring Lita as she bursts into great, terrible sobs. Sherlock closes his eyes, and sees that child staring at him.

“Stop being such a baby.” Kita mocks. “You want a reason to cry?”

“Jihi,” She calls, turning to Sherlock and says, as easily as if she was ordering a meal, “Hold her hand down.”

At night now, the child screams like Lita did.

* * *

He closes the door softly behind him. The lights in the large VIP suite glow off the walls as if the room was underwater. Everything is white; he nearly rolls his eyes at the thought of another interior designer thinking they were original, with the white marble floors and plush endless couches and high ceilings.

There is a light at the end of the hall, a beam from a lighthouse in the middle of a rocky ocean. Rooms exit off of the corridor like grottos, silent and still with sleeping sharks.

“Kita?”

He treads carefully on the shining floor, bleached like sand, as he glancing into the darkness of each anteroom as he passes, heading towards the light at the end of the hall.

“I told you to call me Seung.”

He stops. Thinks for a moment, re-evaluates—then turns.

Kita stands at the other end of the hall behind him, leaning against one of the pillars, her body smooth in the light. She’s naked, ink curling over nearly every inch of her skin. She smiles. The water snake coiled between her breasts does the same.

She steps forward. He stays where he is.

“My mother raised me better than that.”

Kita laughs. The lilies on her thighs sway as she moves, bobbing in the soft current of movement. A koi pond swims around her navel, mosaic Siamese fighting fish circling her torso in a drain. At her throat, a bacculite curls over her collarbone. Between her legs, an anemone folds out like a sunflower. Pinnate colonies wind up her calves in impossible detail, taking over every pale space of skin like ink bleeding on paper. Red and white coral coats the curve of her shoulders in false armour; octopi hide in safety, squeezing themselves inside the bottle of her ribs, tentacles wrapped over bone, never to be separated.

He stares openly, as one does when awestruck by an rare work of art. And that’s what she is, what this is. It transcends her, and this is not Kita Seung-Eun he’s looking at, this is just a canvas and it is the ink that draws his attention, not her curves, not what she’s offering him, and certainly not her.

She turns, obliging an unspoken request. A red tide washes over her shoulders, its glowing bioluminescence soft in the cool churning light—an ultraviolet tattoo. He almost wants to touch it, feel the flesh raise and prickle under his fingers. At her coccyx a bluefire jellyfish nestles, defenseless and unassuming, thin drifting tentacles curling up around the vertebrae of her spine. He wonders for a delirious moment if it would sting him if he grazed it—

Kita moves quickly, faster than he imagined she could—stupid—and he barely blocks her jab, forearm coming up to stop the blade an inch from his temple. He steps on her bare foot, heel digging into the thin skin, and uses his weight to his advantage, grabbing her other arm and pinning it behind her.

“Show me the note.” She says quietly, as if he doesn’t have the upper hand, as if she didn’t just try to slit his throat.

He stares down at her. Wondering, for a moment, if he could play stupid, if it would give him the upper hand.

“And how,” he begins, “might I do that, when you keeping trying to kill me?” He cocks his head. “Run my course, have I? It’s barely been a month.”

“I know who you are, Mr Holmes. I know who you work for.”

“Oh? Enlighten me, please.”

“Moran.” She hisses. “The spider’s web.”

“Really?” He can’t help but be a little offended. “You think I’m working for him? You think I’d waste my time so poorly?”

“You…but you didn’t use an alias, you came just after he left. He must have sent you, he must have left you in charge—”

Sherlock can’t quite conceal the anger that bubbles up inside him. His grip on her wrist tightens. His heel digs further into her foot.

“He’s gone? Moran isn’t here?”

Kita shakes her head. “He was in Bombay, last I heard. Heading for Bangalore. But you would know that, wouldn’t you?”

“You’ve been misinformed, sadly.” He bites out. “Our association is at an end as well. I wasted—” He stops. He is overcome with the urge to break something. He has spent a month here, a month, a captive, a gun for hire, and for what? Moran isn’t here. Moran is not. Here. A month is gone, Moran is gone, he was never here in the first place, not when it was crucial, not when it mattered—he wants to break something—

In his blindness, overcome momentarily with disappointment, Kita sweeps her free foot, catching him in the knee and sending him down, but he takes her with him, his grip unwavering. She tries to free the knife but he holds onto it, feeling the blade bite into his palm. He tugs on her arm, feeling the pop of dislocation and she is too proud to scream, which is a pity, because then her soldiers would come to her aid. Her pride might be the death of her, and he wants to say we are the same but instead he tightens his hand around the knife, slippery with his blood, and grapples it from her hand. Kita stills as he holds it to her throat, the two of them struggling for breath. The sea life printed on her trembles with rough waves.

“Do you know why you will die tonight?” He asks her softly.

She doesn’t answer, eyes staring unblinkingly up at him. He knows this feeling, he’s had it before—the moments of realization that you will die with absolute certainty. That death has finally come for you and there’s no getting away.

“You will die,” he breathes, “for a girl whose fingers you made me cut off one by one, for a girl who didn’t know any better than the life you cornered her into. You will die for the sake of a man you will never meet. A man with an unerring ability to haunt me, a man you never harmed, or heard of, or laid eyes on. And I want you to know that. You are dying for no other reason than the fact that a stranger’s life means much more—means the most—to me, than yours does.”

“The note.” Kita says hoarsely. “Show me the note.”

Sherlock grins bitterly. “You want to spend your last moments staring at a piece of paper…”

But he acquiesces, pulling the slip of paper out, showing her the scrawled name.

“‘Ne’?” She reads, confusion bunching her face. “On whose orders?”

He frowns, then flips the paper, and watches as Kita reads.

“‘Kita Seung-Eun.’ Upstairs. Two guards. Quietly.’”

“Had it backwards.” Sherlock murmurs. “Apologies.”

Later, he thinks about how odd it was that her last words were her death warrant.

* * *

He finds Ne outside, ever present cigarette smoldering in his hand.

“It is done?”

He nods. There isn’t even blood on his shirt.

“Your hand.”

Sherlock looks down and curses. His gloves are ruined.

“Here,” Ne pulls off a few notes from the wad Sherlock has handed him. “Get some new ones.”

Sherlock represses the urge to laugh. He nods his head in thanks.

“What will you do now, Jihi?” Ne asks as sirens wail in the distance.

He shrugs. “Run, most likely.”

Ne nods. “Smart.”

“And you?”

“Well, they will come after you, even if I take her place. They all loved her, and had none to spare for me, or for you. We’re outsiders, you know. They never knew what exactly to do with us. But perhaps I can do something for you. A plane ticket, perhaps.”

* * *

Sherlock sits on his bed, thumbing through his phone, the one he kept from before for moments like this.

13:04

Why exactly are representatives from the London Aquarium looking for you?

13:07

Missed Call from: John Watson

YOU HAVE ONE VOICEMAIL

He presses play and holds the phone up to his ear, as though he hadn’t memorised it long ago, as though he could pretend it just happened.

“Sherlock, why the bloody hell is there an octopus in the meat drawer, I—wait, what was that—SHERLOCK! YOU—OH MY GOD YOU ABSOLUTE WANKER YOU STOLE AN OCTOPUS FROM THE AQUARIUM, DIDN’T YOU? JESUS, what the fuck is wrong—OH MY GOD IT’S STILL FUCKING ALIVE JESUS FUCKING CHRIST—listen you two work at the aquarium right, you deal with…this—SHERLOCK, this is worse than the head cheese in the sink, honestly—do you hear me, this is WORSE, you absolute bastard—you’ve put me off coffee and now I can’t eat sushi ever again, what’s fucking next you posh—”

The message ends with a click.

Sherlock sighs, pocketing his phone in the inner pocket of his coat, near his heart. He shrugs his coat on and hears footsteps thunder down the hall. He rolls his neck, checking for the small bag tucked next to his phone.

He turns as the door bursts open.

* * *

Later, he will sit on a plane and think of a new name as he shrugs off his old one. He’s already washed the blood away in the sink, and it’s time for this one to go too.

Later, he will wake from where he sleeps on a dirty floor in another busy city, as the sun rises through the windows, and wonder in his exhaustion why it looks the same, no matter where he is.

Later, he will jimmy the lock on a door in London, and, after placing a box of takeaway sushi on the counter, he will settle into a familiar chair in an unfamiliar flat. And he will wait.

Later.

All of this will come later.

For now, the demons weighing on his chest drag him down into sleep. For now, he will keep downing this sour in the cup he’s been dealt. Life will go on, with or without him. It will still end and begin whether he is there to see it, to cause it, or ignore it. For now, it will.

For now. For now. For now.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Demons" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N527oBKIPMc
> 
> The club song (not sorry in any way, shape, or form): "Monster" - Kanye West - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kWuOUijAbc


	3. Don't Swallow the Cap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Everything I love is on the table.
> 
> Everything I love is out to sea.
> 
> I'm not alone,
> 
> I'll never be,
> 
> And to the bone,
> 
> I'm evergreen.”
> 
> “Don’t Swallow the Cap” – The National

Blood coarses through their veins, pooling in their wild limbs and sparking against deep bone. The feeling is unparalleled. There is nothing quite like it, nothing quite like banging your shin against a skip as you barrel out of a filthy alley, nothing _quite like_ scraping your palm against rough brick as you use your momentum to propel you into the next waiting adventure; into the waiting hot-red arms of the next chase, the outcome as fragile as smoke in the wind but to you it is just another day, and you know  the wind is only blowing smoke around a windowless room, for there is no real chance of danger. Not to you, and most certainly not to him. This is strange to everyone else, but strange is what you do better and what he does best.

Slats of waxen gold light slash down on their backs as they run behind the houses, every other step in darkness.

Christ, he needs to get new shoes. His old ones are wearing out from the running. Shame, they were a good pair—

Sherlock’s bounding ahead of him, as usual. He is a blur on the horizon, as usual.

John huffs a laugh with no source but the fact that he’s alive and following his friend, and runs faster.

* * *

Someone’s tapping on the table nearby. Anxious, a smoker with poorly tended nailbeds and uneven, broken nails from a habit of nervous chewing.

He stares up, head tilted back to stare into the globe of light. There will never be a perfect sphere or circle. It’s mathematically impossible. Most things are, and other forces continue to perpetuate the myth that they aren’t. If you turn a gyroscope fast enough, the center pillar appears to remain in place, keeping the whole operation from collapsing in on itself.

He would know. Gyroscopes were his first love, after all. An object that defies its own nature through interior, self-propelling force was incredible to him as a child. No one had anticipated how long a little cheap stocking stuffer would stay with him. His mother had been pleased. He was always hard to buy for. He’d spent hours trying to balance it on any surface he could find, upsetting a few cats and relatives in the process, but a child does have such a one track mind, and he was a cherubic, curly-haired little boy, so many and most forgave him as often as they forgot him.

He’d never liked that string though, tied around the axis pole. He never quite forgave what it was: an enabler. He’d always loathed them since he sat down Christmas morning and realised through trial-and-error that no matter what he did, he’d never get the wheel spinning without winding the string around it. A tedious business, certainly, but it ruined the wholeness of the thing, it tainted the idea that perhaps he had found something that could move itself without anyone’s help, something that could spin off all on its own, forever, self-perpetuating and independent. Wouldn’t that just solve everything, if the string was out of the equation forever?

The light blurs, swirling around in and out of itself, refracting in smaller atomised points, golden bubbles hanging around the corners of his vision. Or perhaps he’s dehydrated. Perhaps he’s stared too long. Perhaps lots of things. Perhaps, perhaps.

Someone steps forward and blocks his view of the light.

 _“Hallå_? _Är du okej_?”

A plump, pale voice and a plump, pale hand wave over him, silhouetted and dark.

“ _Ja_.” He answers, knocking the hand away. “Fine.”

The shadow of the barwoman moves away and he continues to drum his fingers on the table, only to have the light blocked again a moment later.

He snaps his head up to tell them to _leave him alone_ , but misjudges the distance and bangs his head against the light, sending it swinging away.

“Graceful as ever, I see.” Mycroft sniffs, sitting down without preamble. “Good to see that hasn’t changed.”

“Oh, fuck _off_.”

His brother smiles, the one with a stilted chill propping it up. “Momentarily, I assure you. This won’t take longer than it has to—”

“It already has.”

“Sherlock,” he sighs, weary with the tone of one who’s all too familiar with his nature, “just give me what I came here for. And for God’s sake, be discreet.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and produces a USB from his pocket before flicking it to clatter across the table to his brother, who shuts his eyes and sighs but takes it with a swipe of his hand.

“And everything—”

“Yes.” Sherlock snaps, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Now give me what I came here for.”

Mycroft pulls a netbook from his bag and hands it to Sherlock, but before he can take it his brother draws it back with a pointed look.

Sherlock glares at him for his pettiness before he growls “ _Please_.”

Mycroft lets Sherlock snatch the computer from him with a small smirk, but his brother has already opened it and begun to dive down into the part of his mind so impenetrable that nothing else can enter until he permits it to. Mycroft could hold a hot poker to his feet and he wouldn’t feel it until the smell got to him. Perhaps not even then.

He watches his brother’s attention devour the screen, and wonders if this is it, if this is how far unchecked he has allowed his affections to go. He is staring at it as if it is the one thing in the whole world he needs, as if his existence hinges on it. This table holds the one thing Sherlock Holmes cares about the most, and this one thing is an ocean and circumstance away.

“Where was this taken?” Sherlock asks, brow furrowed.

“Croydon. It’s where—”

“Yes, I know _where_ , but _where_ was _this_ taken?”

“You’ll have to elucidate, I’m afraid.”

Sherlock glares at him until he concedes. “His sister’s, naturally. Normal people do tend to visit relatives in times of emotional strife.”

“We don’t.”

“Yes, but would you call us normal, Sherlock? We’re a different breed, brother mine. The only times we ever visit are matters of state and Mummy’s enforced tea times.”

“The time stamp has been altered. Why?”

Mycroft frowns. “What do you mean—?”

“I’m the actor of the family and we both know that. Why?”

“It was…the most recent recording we had.”

Sherlock huffs. “Obvious. This was taken a few days ago—”

“Weeks.”

“—and that’s irrelevant anyways, you know I’d have taken anything—” Sherlock cuts off with a pause then a vicious glare. “ _Weeks_? What do you mean weeks?” He blanches, suddenly white-knuckling the netbook. “He’s not—”

“No, he’s fine, Sherlock, I can assure you. Perfectly whole, unmolested, and left alone, per both of your requests.”

 _Good_.

Sherlock returns his gaze back to the screen, fingers steepled at his nose. “How many times did he tell you to fuck off before you actually did?”

“Oh, more than a few. I only left him alone in the ostentatious ways. No more black cars idling by and all that.”

“Weeks…” Sherlock mutters, scanning the feed. “Why is there a gap of _weeks_?”

“He’s on vacation.”

“And you expect me to believe you can’t find him, whereverhe went?”

“No, I don’t, I am simply stating facts. I know very well where he is.”

“Where is the missing feed then? Show me.”

“I agreed to one recorded event, Sherlock, and no more.”

Sherlock leans back and stares him. Mycroft knows that look too well, the assessing predator lurking in the grass. As if Mycroft were low enough to be counted as _prey_. His brother was always bold.

“Where is he, Mycroft? I need proof that he is where you say he is. I know you have it.”

Sherlock pauses, eyes drifting over his brother briefly and Mycroft readies himself for the onslaught.

“You didn’t come here upon your arrival.” He begins. “Your shirt is too starched, a sign of cheap detergent. You had to wash it, and hotel detergent was the only available option because you didn’t expect to be here long enough to bring a change of clothes. You went somewhere else. You went to see someone and they ruined your shirt, or you ruined it while visiting them. Gluttonous as you are, I can’t see you cramming scones and tea in that maw so sloppily that you’d spill. You can’t move that fast anyways. So,” He sniffs, “someone ruined your shirt and assuming it wasn’t a clumsy waiter because you didn’t have time to eat anywhere much to your chagrin, it wasn’t food—”

“Sherlock—” Mycroft begins in warning, because this will go nowhere good if he continues, but his brother continues on, undeterred.

“—so it is some other staining substance you wouldn’t be caught dead in. Jam, possibly, maybe even wine although you abstain in moments of stress because you fear mother’s problem is genetic, or—oh.” Sherlock raises an eyebrow. “Someone hit you and drew blood, didn’t they? You’ve healed overnight, so it was only superficial, and I’m recalling that the print of your shirt is only available in a few neighbourhoods in Stockholm, so perhaps you’ve been here longer than previously thought. You’ve met someone here who was mad at you enough to punch you regardless of the consequence and either ruined multiple shirts or you were caught off-guard by their presence and rescinded a short trip in favour of a longer stay, because you’re attached to this person and you feel responsible—no, you feel guilty, like you owe them something and can only offer more of your time…” 

Mycroft can see the suspicion blooming into a fragile realisation.

“Tell me. Mycroft,” Sherlock demands, colour rising to his cheeks as his voice wavers. “ _Tell me where he is_.”

“I’m right here, you fucking toff bastard.”

Sherlock turns his head.

He sees John Watson standing before him.

Later, he won’t know if it was the punch that knocked him out, or if he’d fainted.

It must have been the punch.

* * *

He’d dreamed that he’d had pine in place of marrow in his bones. That was all he could remember, that sticky sweet smell that perfumed his insides, turning his blood to sap. He couldn’t decide if it was worth saving or deleting, so he set it aside.

Bigger things to deal with, and all.

He stares at the door to his bedroom—well clearly _John’s_ because his things are there, and this quite abhorrently is a hotel room—and contemplates how long he can wait before facing the other side. This thing he’s waited for, wanted, for two years, and he can’t bring himself to get up and go to it. He’d envisioned so many ways of seeing John again, and this had not been one of them.

There are many ways to see a sphere, but the appearance of the remaining object remains the same. A gyroscope must have string around its axis to be catalysed into motion, and a point will be reached when the string will run out and you must rewind the string again.

Option one: He can go out there now, act as if nothing has happened, and misunderstand and condescend to everything John says until he gets so frustrated he hits him or leaves or both.

Unsavoury, but plausible, and more necessary for John’s safety. The chance of a permanent fallout of their friendship is high.

Or: he can go out there now, cry and beg for John’s forgiveness, and a rocky road is paved but exists. John joins him for the remainder of his travel.

Equally unsavoury, but the prospect of John’s presence back in his life is sorely tempting. The prospect of injury to John’s person is not. The chance of his abduction, torture, or death is high. The risks rival the reward.

Or: he can go out there now, and see what waits for him, then plan accordingly.

…That would work.

As he prepares himself to open the door, he already knows what he’s going to do.

The notion of John is too alluring to ignore.

* * *

 

John is waiting in the kitchen, seated at the table with his arms crossed. Sherlock takes the opportunity to drag the chair out as noisily as he can, scraping it against the floor in the great, cold silence.

“Evening.” He says as he sits, joining his hands on the table as he glances around. “Lovely room.”

“It’s two in the morning.”

“Wonderful. Most felonies are committed around two.”

They sit, and they stare, and they say nothing.

John’s changed. Why has he changed, and so noticeably? Sherlock always assumed he’d stay the same. He was supposed to stay the same, ensconced in 221B with Mrs Hudson, drinking his too-bitter tea and reading his tediously predictable books and waiting for him to come back, same as always.

His observations offered no comfort.

Severe lines under John’s eyes—insomnia, or lack of sleep. The night terrors had returned. The 5’oclock shadow blurring into actual scruff signalled poor personal care, or lack of concern for good appearance. He’d been alone too. His clothes were out of date, as ever, but less so out of fashion sense and more from necessity. He was unemployed, or had no fixed income—remember to question him on that point—and bought from charity shops.

He’d known John’s life would have been boring without him, but this reaction was…extreme. Alarming, even. John was a creature of habit—personal hygiene was routine. This man before him was going against the grain.

“You look smaller without all that extra weight.” Sherlock says without thinking, as if to voice it to himself. “Shorter. Like a dwarf.”

“Condolences.” He replies bitingly. “Grief does that to people.”

“Grief?” Sherlock frowns. “Who died?”

His friend’s eyes widen in surprised disbelief, eyebrows rising in disconcertion.

“ _You_ died, you fucking arrogant pisspot!”

“‘Pisspot’? That’s new—”

Then he’s being hauled across the table by the hand fisted in his shirt, and John’s other fist is squarely planted in his jaw.

“Will you stop hitting me?” He shouts later from where he rests face-down on the carpet.

“Stop being a deliberately ignorant, self-righteous _arsehole_!”

Sherlock groans and rolls himself over, tenderly touching his purpling cheek.

“Doctor Watson, if you’re quite done, we have other matters to attend to.” Mycroft’s voice wavers over from his spot in the corner of the den.

“ _You_.” Sherlock scrambles to his feet and advances angrily. “What spectacular idiocy prompted you to think it was just a _fantastic_ idea to bring him here?”

“I assure you, Sherlock, it was not my idea.” Mycroft says, and then adds sourly: “He punched me as well. Damn near ruined a perfectly good shirt.”

“What do you mean? You’re saying he _surprised_ you? Do you outsource all your dull and tedious thought processes out to your useless assistants now, or just the incredibly stupid ones?”

“I asked him to bring me.” John says stonily.

“He _asked_ you to bring him, _wonderful_ , I—” His gaze snaps suddenly to John. “Wait, what?”

John crosses his arms and straightens his stance. “I asked him to bring me.”

“Yes, thank you for that reiteration, fortunately my hearing is still perfectly intact…you _asked_ him—”

“I found you, Sherlock Holmes.” John says, unable to keep the streak of pride from his voice. “I tracked you here, and told Mycroft to take me the rest of the way. You might be able to hide from the rest of the world, but not me.”

Sherlock is shocked into silence, and a little part of him tucks the feeling away to be kept forever, for it was priceless in its rarity.

Of course. Of all the criminals and runaways of the world, it would always be down to John.

Sherlock had…miscalculated.

“I will…wait until later today to bring these matters to you.” Mycroft says, standing. “It seems you both should have time to, ah, catch up.” He looks at John as he passes. “Doctor Watson, I will text you the details forthwith.”

John nods, not taking his eyes off of Sherlock, who grimaces at his brother.

“What, no endearments or tearful embraces goodbye?”

Mycroft stares at him, eyes flickering down before he smiles, and Sherlock thinks it may even be genuine. “It is good to see that you aren’t dead yet.”

“Mmm. And the same to you.”

He’s gone without another word, shutting the door softly behind him.

Sherlock and John are together once more.

He doesn’t know how to feel about that.

John’s first reaction was to put the kettle on, and something deep inside Sherlock tightens with softening warmth at the familiarity, but he nearly spills the whole cup banging it on the table in front of Sherlock.

He sips. Three sugars, light milk.

“You remembered.”

“Of course I did,” John grits out. “Tea like that will rot anyone’s teeth out.”

It’s quite hard to talk to John when everything he says sounds hostile, like he’s got a loaded gun on him and Sherlock’s a long-standing enemy who’s getting a morality lecture before he’s shot full of lead.

“How did you find me?”

“Wasn’t hard, actually.” John huffs, preparing his tea.

“Oh, wonderful. I was hoping to live as conspicuously as possible. Lovely to know it worked. _Ta_.”

John sits across from him, sizing him up, noting every change, but not reading into it like Sherlock does. He catalogues it to be filed away later, and Sherlock lets it wash over him in the moment. Fundamental differences in one action.

“Someone started a forum after you—after your fall. I didn’t read much of it at first until it started popping up more and more. People other than myself believed in you, believed that you were still out there, and I didn’t want to keep fooling myself. I’d seen the blood and…felt your wrist.” John swallows roughly, taking a sip of tea to mask it. “But one day I found myself browsing it, and when I checked the time it’d been three hours since I started. Then I went back the next day, and the next. People kept saying they’d seen you out on the street or in a coffee shop or playing third seat cello in the London Philharmonic—”

“ _Cello_?” Sherlock interrupts disdainfully. “As if I’d pick something so numbingly massive, there’s no grace to it, I may as well be hacking away at an elephant carcass with a string of floss—”

“ _Anyways_ ,” John continues, “I started looking through all the locations. I told myself it was for a lark at first, and some of the more obviously outlandish ones did make me laugh at the thought of you in them, but some…I don’t know, some had truth to them if you looked logically at it.”

John mentioning logic and himself in one go made something in Sherlock’s reptile brain spark with nascent pride.

“How so?”

“Well after Bart’s you couldn’t very well have been in Moscow the next day…” He stops at the look on Sherlock’s face. “Oh my god, you were, weren’t you. In _one day_? Sherlock, that’s insane—”

“It was admittedly very late in the day that I arrived. News of my death had already been broadcast by the time I landed, so…it is feasible that whoever saw me had already formed a conspiracy theory of their own.”

“Sherlock, it’s not a conspiracy theory to believe you’d survived when you had.”

He shrugs, and John sighs, rubbing at his temples. “Well, the point is that I started to look at the corresponding news stories of the places I’d thought you were likely to be in. Places where Moriarty might have thought it was important to have people there.”

“You knew about the web?”

John shoots him an exasperated ‘ _please give me some credit_ ’ look and Sherlock feels the knot of familiarity tighten. He’d missed this. Missed him.

“Any serious international criminal would have a network of contacts, especially one as big as Moriarty. It just makes sense. So I started off in the big places, Berlin, Paris, Moscow—though I should’ve realised if anyone could make a cross-continental trip in less than a day, you could’ve.”

“Moscow is only a four hour flight away. I made it in three.”

John sighs with a heaviness that strikes Sherlock silent. “Of course you did. Christ, I was identifying your body and you were probably already a continent away—of course you were. Of course.”

“Why did you pick big cities?” Sherlock asks softly, cowed by the sudden appearance of an emotional burden he’d had no idea John was carrying. It hadn’t even occurred to him. He thought John was…less invested than he was. He’d wanted to believe that he wasn’t as involved as Sherlock was. That he didn’t have as much to lose.

“Because it’d be easier to find who you were looking for if you started big. Bigger criminal empires, bigger stakes, bigger everything. It’s like a reversed needle in the haystack. They’d be everywhere. In smaller places, they’d be scarcer, harder to find, easy to slip between your fingers.”

Sherlock nearly smiles at the deduction, and pride wells within him at the knowledge that the things he’s taught John, the things John has _learned_ , have stuck with him.

“What made you think that?”

“I was in the army, Sherlock, in combatant territory, in the wilderness, with no major city around for hundreds of miles. Then I got sent back to London, to you, and to all that came with it, including the crime. You think the difference wouldn’t have been immediately noticeable to anyone that took the time to think about it?”

“People rarely do.”

“That’s right.” John smiles ruefully. “They rarely do.”

The smile disappears from his face as quickly as it came, leaving this changed, greyer John in its wake.

“I hoped—at your grave…” He stops, swallowing roughly. “I didn’t want you to be dead, and it seems that you heard me, so well—well done, you.” Another pause, another carefully levered word cracking on its exit into the ether. “I didn’t think my future included you in it anymore, but you’ve proven me wrong, and I don’t know your intentions in all this, but you were staring at an old tape of me _shopping_ like it was a locked, windowless room with a body in it, so it bloody well looks like yours includes me as well. Now, if that’s what you want, you will tell me everything, _everything_ , that happened to you from the moment you were on Bart’s roof to now, or I swear to God, Sherlock, I will get my things and I will go home and will not be there if you try to find me.”

 _If_? Sherlock frowns, wondering what could possibly have made John think that he could go anywhere Sherlock wouldn’t want to follow him, but John misreads it as a search for a loophole in his ultimatum.

“You won’t find me, Sherlock. You’re not the only one who knows how to disappear.”

“I understand.” Sherlock replies lowly.

“So,” John says, crossing his arms as he leans back in his chair, “Start talking.”

For a gyroscope to spin again after it stops, you must rewind the string and pull.

* * *

Fog rolls through the streets of Bern, carpeting the air with a thick dampness, blotting out the streetlights into faint watery, radiating globes. High above the city, the mountains blurs in a slow erasure as the sun sets and the mists begin to fold themselves over the horizon.

He looks over his shoulder ostentatiously, collar turned up. If they’re going for dramatics, he may as well fully commit to it.

Bells begin to ring the start of the vespers through the heavy night, tolls shimmering through the quiet streets.  He darts inside, shutting the door to the dark fog as he turns in the antechamber, soft lights shining on the burnished wood and silver ornaments. A stoop old man uses what may be the last of his physical strength to hold the door open for him. Sherlock nods his thanks, and doesn’t mention his latent alcoholism or inability to refuse his wife another cat after their son’s death (the fact of which he may or may not have caused was indeterminable, as Sherlock couldn’t see his shoes in the right light).

He must be growing up. John would be proud.

The church choirboys are singing a delicately spun song as he walks out into the nave, his gaze sweeping the surroundings. He was quite late already, and the parishioners—or those secular beings that only attend on major holidays—have already been and gone, yet the devout remain. Golden lights hang over his head, shining down in a muted glow. He feels horribly out of place, a stranger in other’s well-trod lands. At least that’s one thing he can count on, no matter where he is.

People turn slightly to look at him, but quickly lose interest. He envies them, just a little bit. They have something to cede themselves to wholly. He has something else, something less in some ways but more in others. Mummy had tried to drill organised religion into her sons early in life, yet it never seemed to take with either, though both shammed piety well, allowing themselves to be outfitted in their churchwear every Sunday as if they were costumes. If he cared to think about it long enough, Sherlock would come to the conclusion that the pew his family occupied for ten years was the best stage his childhood could offer.

The gyroscope is on its last turn. It’s starting to falter, starting to slow. It will fall soon if he can’t grab the string.

He ducks into a middle pew, not too far away to be suspicious, but appropriate for one cowed by arriving late to the service. Someone muffles a cough behind him, and the bench creaks amid the choir’s song.

He glances around and stifles the disappointed frown. They all have a light to lead them, and he has himself. He has his clues and his deductions and they have their faith, which, essentially, are the same things.

His hands are fidgeting, thumb running over the curve of his fingers. Why is he fidgeting? Who does he possibly have to fear here?

“Lovely alto.” A man mutters as he slides in next to Sherlock with little regard for polite space.

“Yes.” Sherlock agrees quietly, turning his head in acknowledgment as he stops his leg’s minute shakings. “Quite.”

“You’re late.”

The rest of the parish stands as if they’d been cued earlier to catch the outsiders off-guard, and Sherlock follows.

“Apologies,” he murmurs, “though you appear to be as well.”

John scoffs, thumbing at his program. The bruise on his collarbone is receding and his lip is healing nicely, though he’s missing the top button of his shirt and his jacket is creased.

_1)_ _Top button pops from strain of lateral rotation_

_i._ _Most likely defensive in nature_

_ii._ _Attacked from behind_

_2)_ _Creases from dropping jacket to the ground_

_i._ _Preventive avoidance of impeded arm movement_

_ii._ _No dirt. Why is there no dirt?_

_iii._ _No snow or water stains either_

_iv._ _Altercation inside??  Check shoes for confirmation_

Sherlock doesn’t bother to hide his lean forward to look pointedly at John’s shoes, and John pointedly ignores him.

_3)_ _Shoes are…_

“John,” He whispers vehemently as if he’s been personally wronged by the sight of John’s socks, “where are your shoes?”

“Later, Sherlock.”

“Who?” Sherlock persists.

“ _Later_ , _Sherlock_.” He hisses back.

“You’re shoeless in near-freezing weather and you show signs of being attacked. _Tell me_.”

“Does it matter?” John mutters irately, sitting back down.

 _Yes, yes, of course it matters_ , is what he wants to say.

He says nothing, and continues to look at John even after the man has focused his attention on the service. John wouldn’t want him to make a scene in front of people (or maybe he does, Sherlock can’t tell these days).

Later. They will have time later.

* * *

He’s lying on the bed, bouncing a squeeze ball against the wall of their apartment in Prague, neat despite its small size. Circumstance has dictated they only have space for one bed, leaving room for a small washroom the size of a closet and a rickety desk. Sticky notes litter the wall above John’s head, and if Sherlock doesn’t look it head on, he can fool himself for a few seconds into believing they’re at Baker Street. Home sweet home.

_Vinohadry is clean, and Nusle._

_Is it so hard to smoke a rat out? Podolí is the only answer, but no current activity has been reported. Tram use is possible, car or vehicle ownership unlikely. Large transport vans are out. Too big for a criminal in hiding. Jelen is high profile, not likely to be out much, but he has to eat, same as everyone else._

_Orders from Moriarty won’t have dictated going underground. He didn’t care that much for the collateral of his empire once he shot himself. Gyroscopes need a string to keep turning, and this hasn’t toppled yet. Jelen is still out there, and Moran keeps turning the string. Find one, find the other. Reverse needle in the haystack…_

“I’ve been thinking…” John says, breaking a silence of ten minutes and thirty-three seconds as he sets down his pen where he’s been writing in his notebook.

“Don’t strain yourself.” Sherlock mutters, and feels the heat of John’s ire glaring in his peripherals.

“…about this author my teacher told me about.”

“Relevance, John.”

“ _Patience_ , Sherlock. Anyways, this bloke was a brilliant writer, but an alcoholic, I think, or, you know, addicted to something. Morphine maybe. I don’t remember.”

“Please John, morphine’s hardly a stylish addiction these days—”

“There’s a point here, Sherlock.” John says quietly, and the detective shuts his mouth at the tone. “I don’t remember what we read or even what his name was, but I remember how our teacher told us he died. He was using eye drops and had the cap in his mouth but swallowed it and choked to death because his alcoholism suppressed his gag reflexes. He died because he loved something so much it killed him.”

“A poetic end, surely.”

“The _point_ is that I—I can’t be your cap, Sherlock. I won’t be the thing you kill yourself over.”

Sherlock tilts his head back and laughs as John recoils in surprise.

“Don’t you see John?” He chuckles. “I already did.”

“You know what I mean.”

Sherlock turns his head and the look on John’s face wipes the mirth from his own.

“Why would I ever want to be in a world you’re not in?” He says quietly, coming to sit up on the bed.

“You already made me believe that once.”

“I apologised once too. Would you like me to do so again? Is that what’s bothering you?”

“No,” John sighs, pinching his nose, “I—the look on your face, in Stockholm. When you saw me. It was so clear that I wasn’t in any plan you’d had until then. I wasn’t supposed to be there, and, to me, neither were you. We were supposed to be together, in London, living out our lives and all that comes with sharing a flat with you. I was supposed to be convincing you to buy the milk or label your experiments or running after criminals with you, not punching you so hard you fainted.”

“Moriarty had other ideas, John.”

“I realise that, Sherlock, I do. I understand why you jumped and I—I haven’t quite forgiven you, but I get it. My point with this is that I don’t think I can survive another fall like that, and certainly if I’m the cause of it. I won’t be your end, Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock stares at him, hard, for a moment, hands steepled in front of him. He stands slowly, takes the step that crosses their whole room, and kneels in front of John.

“Don’t you see?” He repeats softly. “You’re not my end. You’re my string.”

“If this is where you make a bad metaphor about crocheting, I’m leaving.”

“No, John, no, I would nev—” Sherlock stops, unable to correctly phrase what his mind is yelling at him. “You saw what Mycroft had on the netbook in Stockholm.”

“Yes.”

“Then what made the little dots in your little brain connect that to me not wanting you near me?”

John sighs. “It’s not about me thinking you want rid of me, Sherlock, it’s the fact that you never considered me in any of your plans. Not with the hallucinations in Baskerville, not with your fall at Bart’s—Christ, even with the pool you just showed up with the Bruce Partington plans regardless of where I was and thought you could solve it yourself! You don’t trust me enough to include me in the things that matter most to who we are as—as friends.”

“But I do, John.” Sherlock interjects, stumbling on his words in their haste to get out, to stop John from thinking he can leave and it won’t be the absolute end of his world. This whole thing has been for him, and he can’t go now. “I do. If I have faith in anything, it’s in you. You _found_ me, halfway across the world. You said it was easy, but you bypassed not only _two_ Holmes brothers but Mycroft’s surveillance to get to me. You are a _marvel_ , John Watson. How could I not constantly consider you in everything I do? How could I not, when you are the bravest and wisest man I’ve ever known? You are one of the few people who mean most to me, and I would not see you ruined because of it. That’s why I spared you from everything. I can’t be your cap any more than you can be mine.”

“You know as long as I’m here, you won’t be alone, Sherlock. Never. I’ll track you down if I have to. My record’s pretty bloody on point there. If I’m going to stay, if this is going to work, you have to trust me enough to not spare me from the burden you carry. Ruin me a little. Let me help you.”

That night, wedged between John and the wall, he dreams of trees again. He’d had pine in place of marrow in his bones once more, and that sticky sweet smell returns to slow his blood to sap again. He’s slowly poisoned by the greenness of it all.

He wakes as sprouts begin to fracture through his bones.

* * *

“Did you see anything?” John asks as the people begin to file out of the church, leaving them alone in the antechamber. His toes curl with the cold.

“No,” Sherlock answers, eyes scanning the crowd, “but I wasn’t inconspicuous either. Short of shouting our hotel’s address and waving a banner with my name on it, I should have been noticed.”

“Good.” John nods. “It’d be better if you had the Belstaff, but that’d be too easy for them.”

“They are idiots, John,” Sherlock sighs, shouldering out into the cold night as John follows. “They make everything difficult. I could hire a plane, perhaps. Write my name and location in the sky.”

“Yeah, sure,” John snorts. “That’s about as bloody subtle as a wild west showdown.”

“Where are your shoes?”

John says nothing, but looks up, and Sherlock follows his line of vision.

There, pinpoints hanging from the belltower, are John’s shoes, knotted together.

“It’s a long story.”

Later. They will talk later.

* * *

Bits of light and consciousness flicker piecemeal into his head. They were leaving, going somewhere, John was laughing and his breath steamed the air and he had shoes this time, and then he wasn’t there, then it was all white, a face full of snow…

“Evening.” A chipper voice says. Male, hint of an accent, possibly Finnish. More data—

He tries to sit up faster than he should have, and feels his head rock like a buoy in choppy water.

“You might want to lie back a little longer.” The voice suggests. “Alprazolam in great quantities can give one a massive headache.”

“Xanax,” he scoffs. “That was your drug of choice, Jelen?”

“I could have been crueller, you know.”

He tries to raise his head, but it won’t agree to the movement.  It’s not as if he can go anywhere; the straps binding his wrists and ankles to his chair make free range of motion difficult. A challenge, really, but not impossible.

A small light hums on right above him and he blinks against the audacity of its brightness.

“Hell, Mr Holmes,” The man says, dark against the light as he leans forward, “is what we make of our situations.”

“And what might this one be?” Sherlock replies groggily, trying to gather his conscious thoughts into something workable, though they keep bobbing out of reach, disappearing into nothingness as quickly as they come.

“Depends on what your hell is. Shall we find out?”

The chair he’s strapped to begins to whir and he realises belatedly that it’s the same kind as one found in a dentist’s office. He can do nothing but wait until he’s brought up into a sitting position, the light blaring into the sensitive tucked away pains in the back of his head.

“Apologies,” The voice says, turning the light away towards the wall, “You must be feeling very disoriented right now. I can’t say your friend is doing much better.”

Sherlock shuts his eyes, adjusting to the new darkness and information that yes, John is here too. He hadn’t wanted that. He’d wanted it just to be him, wanted John to be miles away in their rented room, looking for him, worried but safe at least. The gyroscope doesn’t need to be restrung just yet, if it’s still turning and he just can’t see it.

“Did you know he used his shoes as a garrotte? Quite impressive, really. My friend never saw it coming until he’d fallen off the roof of that church you two were hiding in.”

An unimpeded and clumsy smile of satisfaction churns over Sherlock’s face. John was usually quite impressive. That was no new information, but it was nice to be validated.

“But alas,” The man says, turning to where the light was shining, “your friend damaged my friend. What might we do about that?”

“Get you a new friend.”

“I am like you, Mr Holmes. I do not find myself abundant in friends.”

“Get you a dog, then.” Sherlock amends. “Or a cat might suffice.”

“I notice you aren’t looking where the light is. Why might that be?”

“The darkness here is much more interesting.” He mutters hazily.

“I think you’re afraid to find out what I did to your friend.”

“I think you’re incorrect.”

“Might you do me the honour of proving me wrong, then?”

Sherlock glances to him, then to the spot of light on the wall, to the point in the corner of his eye that he could see and didn’t want to face. The gyroscope can still spin if he can’t see it.

A body has been pinned to the wall, arms and legs splayed, like a butterfly to a board. A frog being dissected. A tray in front of it, laden with bloodied pink piles of rawness, has offered a modicum of dignity, but corpses have no need for that, and what was once a man was now most certainly a corpse. Its blonde head had fallen down, lacking the functions to hold it up.

It was naked, save for the shoes laced neatly on its feet. John’s shoes.

His breathing is fast in his ears. He’s going to pass out soon, and he doesn’t want to wake up. He wants this man to kill him and get it over with because he’s going to be sick and John can’t see him like that John can’t see him like _this_ , this wasn’t how it was supposed to go, not like this, not like this—

He vomits violently. Uncontrollably. Some sound escapes him, and he doesn’t know what to call it.

He blacks out.

It must have been the punch.

The gyroscope wobbles to stillness.

* * *

Sherlock shakes his head, and leaves before they can ask any more unnecessary questions. He shrugs his coat on—more insulated but less stylish than his old one—and enters the night.

“I don’t like Bern.” He says into the quiet street, breath steaming in the air.

“Why?” John asks, hands shoved into his pockets. “Too clean, too polite, too beautiful—?”

“Too _Swedish_.”

“Can’t help you there much, I’m afraid.”

Something dings in Sherlock’s pocket and he pulls his phone out.

“Ah. Marvellous.”

“What is it?”

“Mycroft’s waiting for us to begin.”

“Sherlock,” John says apprehensively, coming to a stop. “Are you sure you want to—”

Sherlock stops mid-step and turns to his friend, standing there in the falling snow and streetlights. He looks unsure of himself, there in the cold, and it makes him look small.

He walks back to John, snow crunching under his boots as he treads a path untrodden. He stops in front of him, tugging a glove off with his teeth and revealing white skin that reddens in the cold. He takes John’s bare hand in his, both chafing in the wind.

“I’m sure.” He says, thumb passing over the inside of John’s wrist, where a raised pink scar rests.

John shuts his eyes, leaning into him.

“Alright.” He answers. “Alright.”

* * *

The heavy door echoes in the emptiness as it shuts.

“Promptness is a virtue, brother mine.” Mycroft says in the distance, standing in an illuminated ring before a chair.

“He isn’t going anywhere, Mycroft.” Sherlock answers, stepping into the light as he snatches a remote from a tray and presses a button. The chair whirs to life. It’s the kind of chair you’d have in a dentist’s office.

“Evening.” Sherlock says to the man sitting perfectly calm, as if he was waiting for a check-up.

The man doesn’t answer. Sherlock sheds his coat, handing it to Mycroft, who melts back into the shadows, watching, waiting to intervene if he goes too far. John isn’t to be seen.

The man is fully upright, hands bound to the arms of the chair.

“Hell, Jelen,” Sherlock begins sitting down across from him, “is what we make of our situations.”

The man smiles through bloodied teeth.

“And what might this one be?”

Sherlock’s own grin falls into cold stillness.

“Shall we find out?”

He pulls the string, and the gyroscope spins back to life.

* * *

John swipes his card and opens the door. The room is still, save for the castle of Prague looming in the window, outlined in the soft glow of darkening evening. Mycroft’s compensation for a job well done was recuperation in a five star spa that neither of them wanted. Some stains were stuck in the skin so deep that warm baths couldn’t wash it out.

Their things are packed by the door, ready for the flight home tomorrow. Together. Rain was predicted for London, so he’d left out their coats. Couldn’t go home unprepared.

“Sherlock,” He calls, tossing his key onto the counter as he sets down the bags, “dinner.”

The suite is silent. Traffic sounds through an open window somewhere.

“Sherlock?”

He rounds the kitchen and into the den, heading up the thin spiral stairs into their bedroom.

He reaches the platform, stopping in front of their bed. All the windows in the room have been opened, letting in the warm air and outer sounds of foot traffic and cars passing by. Sherlock is sitting at the desk wedged in the corner, naked on the green velvet chair, and hunched over as he stares into one of the mirrors he’s perched on the surface.

“Did you take every mirror in the suite, you vain git?” John scoffs affectionately, and then he frowns upon looking closer. “Sherlock?”

In the mirror, from every angle, his eyes are rimmed in red, blurry with irritated wetness. Life continues on in the blue-bruising streets behind him. The castle’s night lights have come up, casting everything in a golden glow.

“What’s wrong, love?” John asks, sitting on the ottoman just behind him.

“You died that night.” Sherlock answers, voice thick and uneven. He looks at John in one of the mirrors. “I saw you, and I knew it. I knew you’d died for me.”

“Oh. _Oh_ , Sherlock, no I didn’t. Remember? That wasn’t me. That wasn’t me, Sherlock.”

“For what it mattered it was. I’d been waiting for that moment. I knew it. I knew it was going to happen. I knew you were going to die because of me.” He buries his head in his hands, curls inking against his skin. “Ever since Bart’s. I knew it. I knew it.”

“I didn’t die. I’m still here, Sherlock.” John rises, moving carefully as one does with cornered animals. “Hey, look at me. Look at me.” He takes Sherlock’s hands away, holding his cheek in the other.

“I’m here.” He says softly and Sherlock shakes his head against his palm. “You’re not alone. I’m here. I’m right here.”

A small sound escapes Sherlock as he slumps forward and buries his face into John’s neck.

“I keep seeing him kill you. I didn’t look then and now it’s all I see. Even when you’re right here, he’s still cutting you open.”

“He didn’t, love. It was you he tried to dissect, remember? He filled you full of alprazolam and left you to dehydrate in that chair. I was never there. He didn’t get me, I wasn’t there when he ambushed you. Remember? You had a hallucination of me. I was never there.”

“He cut you open.” Sherlock breathes raggedly into his throat. “He pinned you up like an insect and took you apart.”

“No, he didn’t,” John says, moving away to unbutton his shirt, opening it to smooth skin. “See? He didn’t touch me.”

He takes Sherlock’s hand and rests it on his chest, running it lightly over the unmarred, warm surface.  “He didn’t touch me.” He repeats softly.

Sherlock stares at where his hand rests, moving it on his own volition over John’s sternum, thumb brushing against the raised lift of his pectorals. His other hand rubs unthinkingly at his own chest, over a healing jagged scar near his heart.

“You’re here.” Sherlock murmurs into the sound of the warm summer night and the traffic outside.

John smiles softly, running a hand over the one that rests over his heart.

“I’m here.”

“We’re going home tomorrow.”

“We are.”

“It’s over.”

“It’s over.” John repeats, bringing his free hand back again to touch Sherlock’s face. The detective leans into the touch.

John kisses him against the night and the backlit castle, kisses him for endings and beginnings, for snow falling softly over Bern, for tennis balls smacking against the walls in Prague, for a shirt’s patterns only printed in Stockholm, for close calls and long nights, and for just friends to everythings.

He kisses him, and they eat dinner together in bed as they watch night fall. Sherlock sets aside their plates and takes his hand, settling against the duvet as the dark deepens.

When the sun rises, they’re going home.

When the sun sets, London will be waiting for them, the both of them, in the fog and rain.

Nothing sounded better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait!
> 
> All the remaining chapters of "Trouble Will Find Me" will now be posted as **separate** works as well as chapters of this work.

**Author's Note:**

> To cheer you up if you need it:
> 
> Sin Fang - "What's Wrong With Your Eyes"  
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUwiNUlHCAw


End file.
